At this week’s Leading in Local conference we introduced a new dimension. From now on, we’ll be holding startup competitions in order to invite “new blood” into the atmosphere. This builds from the Future Stars program we launched last year.

This week we had 12 strong companies compete thoughout the first few days of the show for audience votes. The “Future Stars Alley” that served as their home base was a popular spot to congregate and sniff out what’s happening in early-stage innovation.

The voting was extremely tight but three companies emerged as finalists to then compete via on-stage demos. A “Shark Tank” style demo session featured the requisite grilling from our guest judges

It was a lot of fun and Punchcard emerged as the winner, based on audience votes. They get bragging rights, a nice trophy, a seat on the next conference’s judges panel, and BIA/Kelsey analyst time for strategy development and positioning.

Special thanks to all competitors (listed here and below), judges and voters. It was a lot of fun and we’ll continue to do it at each conference. Your feedback is also encouraged for how we improve it. We hope to see you in the audience (or on stage) for future competitions.